Sunday, January 1, 2012

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (Jenny)

Case Histories
By Kate Atkinson
Completed January 1, 2012

Case Histories details three cases (from the GoodReads summary):

Case One: Olivia
Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls, goes missing in the
night and is never seen again. Thirty years later, two of her surviving
sisters unearth a shocking clue to Olivia's disappearance among the
clutter of their childhood home. . .

Case Two: Theo delights in
his daughter Laura's wit, effortless beauty, and selfless love. But her
first day as an associate in his law firm is also the day when Theo's
world turns upside down. . .

Case Three: Michelle looks around one
day and finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making. A very needy
baby and a very demanding husband make her every waking moment a
reminder that somewhere, somehow, she'd made a grave mistake and would
spend the rest of her life paying for it--until a fit of rage creates a
grisly, bloody escape.

All three cases are linked to
Detective Jackson Brodie throughout the book, but his presence isn't
dominant within the text like a detective's story would usually be. In
fact, he doesn't do his job in front of us all of the time. Clues are
sometimes presented and the reader is left to make the necessary
assumptions. "Oh, that means that X, and he must have X." He usually
has done these things, but he never is described as doing them. Since
the author did not necessarily consider this book to be in the mystery
genre (according to an interview with her in the back of the book), the
reader should not be surprised that the form of the book does not follow
mystery novel conventions such as case details being articulated, or
conclusions drawn.

The action is often happening "off
stage," to an extent where I'm wondering what was in the novel I
actually read! It actually manages to focus on two of the Land sisters
and the conflict between the two of their personalities, and on the
huffing puffing overweight retired lawyer, Theo. These are two of the
three families who lost family members to murder, so while the cold
cases are being investigated by Brodie, that isn't the story as much as
the people making up the majority of this novel. It is an interesting
angle. Atkinson has gone on to write more Jackson Brodie novels, so this
successful volume becomes the first in a series.

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This blog was created as the official site of the Orange Prize Project - a reading challenge which challenges participants to read all the winners and nominated authors honored by the Women's Prize for Fiction (previously the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction) and the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers.

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The challenge has been discontinued as of January 1, 2014, but I welcome readers to browse the many reviews on this site.